Two Leagues Past Caridin's Cross
by theshutintwodoorsdown
Summary: It seems rather depressing that one exploit should define your entire character for the rest of the generations to come. Maybe I'm just cynical and maybe I just hate romantics, but I've always loathed the word hero. So here's one for all those who thought that's what she was.


**I'm not really much of a writer to be honest. I understand this is not exactly what a lot of people want when they look for a fanfic, but I've had this in my head for months. There was this lingering feeling after I finished Origins, but I can't really place a word to it. Often I read fanfictions and I just feel like people want this perfect ending. The Warden wasn't perfect. Alistair wasn't perfect. Their life was not anything like they imagined it would be and there is something impossibly wonderful in that. Something unexplainable in the few moments that were not a fairytale, but maybe mesmerizing and wholly beautiful in their own respect. I don't know if I can really explain this feeling that's been living deep in my chest for these months, but this is the closest I can come.**

Personally, I will never understand the public's obsession with legends.  
The idea that someone had such a remarkable life as to be forever ensconced in the verses of our songs and scribbled lines of our tomes.  
We act like they live on in these thick paper boxes that only contain a word written and rewritten in dull plodding lines.  
Defender.  
Champion.  
Guardian.  
Saviour.  
Hero.  
Bullshit.  
The ink does not flow like a mythical river in an infinite wisdom.  
The ink sputters across parchment by some tired apprentice whose hand twitches one too many times when crossing their t's.  
Maybe there is glory in killing an archdemon, but Maker knows that there isn't any in sitting shivering and bare faced around a pitiful fire with three days of dirt, blood, and sweat caked on your face and weeks of it lining your clothes.  
Those are of course the little things that these _illustrious_ historians overlook you see.  
She was their knight in shining armor that would sweep them, wobbly knees and lace trimmed dress and all, onto her black warhorse and ride into the sunset.  
Had she perhaps not already been keeping the King of Ferelden's bed warm while his Queen rocked the heir to the Therin bloodline to sleep just a few doors away.  
But nonsense you say.  
The stories speak of nothing but noble conduct from such an esteemed character.  
That is assuming of course you would have even the slightest inkling of what noble conduct is.  
Which you don't.  
So here our champion stands, defiant and radiant at the same time, untarnished by the sands of time and turmoil. When she walks stars fall in her footsteps. When she fights the flames of Andraste herself rise to her command. When she speaks the dragons of the world hear her roar.  
Not a soul would know that in the early hours of day she wretches on the flagstones of her chamber with sweat slicking her forehead and demons wrapping their fingers around her ribcage.  
I wonder if they would believe that she almost let the demons take her.  
Our glorious Defender of Denerim is the best kind of liar. The one that could lie to herself.  
But she is proud all the same as she waits at the helm of her army with her banners rippling in the wind coming off the Waking Sea, clad in the armor they say she pulled from the corpse of an Old God after she slew it.  
Nobody is willing to accept that it was nearly an hour before someone picked her broken body up off the floor of Fort Drakon. That it would be two days after she buried her sword in Urthemiel's chest before her eyes even opened. That before the end of the first day her heart stopped twice.  
After all the waxy skin and bloodshot eyes the Guardian of Peace had as the healers closed her eyes and watched her soul slowly begin to shed itself of a body was simply a myth.  
They say that the Grey Wardens of the Keep were the most loyal soldiers in Thedas. They lived and breathed for their Commander. It is said that each Joining that was performed was done by her personally. That she would raise them up to their feet as Grey Wardens only to have them fall to on their knees to pledge themselves to her.  
I can personally say that she did perform all the Joinings of her Grey Wardens.  
I can also say that the night four recruits died in the same Joining she stood so close to the funeral pyre that the armor she wore burned when it touched her flesh like the vengeful tongue of the dragon from which it was taken.  
She wondered, as her skin turned from white to pink to red, how a person like her could possibly be mistaken for a hero.  
Only in the parchment prison would our Hero remain so impervious and immoveable in her legacy. Out of all the people of Thedas if I were to sum her up into a single word it would not be hero. Even then I find the fact you can sum up years of life and experience into one trite word rather sad. But that is the job of a historian.  
If only they knew that the Hero of Ferelden died two leagues past Caridin's Cross with an axe in her stomach and the smell of charred hair billowing around her.  
But they don't.  
And that's just fine by me.  
Let them write their chronicles and their memoirs and fill book after bloody book with those stupid titles.  
They would never understand anyway.  
No one will know that the nights the demons wouldn't let her sleep she would find herself stumbling down the hall to Zevran's room where they would drink until she couldn't hear anything at all.  
No one will know that once Leliana found her singing as she signed her weekly reports and never told her that her voice put Leliana's own to shame.  
No one will know that after she left Vigil's Keep for the last time her warhound would disappear into the wilds for days.  
No one will know that a regal Queen would share a long glance with her upon their last visit and a nod that was the highest honour a Queen could bestow.  
No one will know that two leagues past Caridin's Cross she turned to look at her lover's ragdoll body as the darkspawn howled somewhere down the passage.  
She pulled herself across the floor to rest her head against his.  
He wasn't breathing and she didn't mind. She would follow him soon.  
He was warm and smelled like metal and dust and the memory of a rose.  
Bloodstains on the floor were leaks in a roof now.  
When she smiled her teeth were dark and slippery like the hole in her chest.  
She died with her eyes staring at the ceiling, saying goodbye to a world that only remembers her for being a hero.


End file.
